A bill calling for the creation of a third public school system combining Orthodox and secular education passed a preliminary reading in the Knesset yesterday.

Such legislation would mark the first time since the state's founding that a public educational system has been established.

MK Melchior hopes the bill will pass its second and third readings during the Knesset's summer session, with the program implemented in the coming school year.

…According to Melchior, "the separation of Orthodox and secular education has created deep polarity in Israel. We must lessen the alienation in Israeli society. The secular and the Orthodox can grow up together." He called the establishment of the new stream "my dream" and "a revolution."

Ten combined Orthodox-secular schools are already operating, some within the Orthodox stream, some within the secular stream, and some private schools.

Makor Rishon-Hatzofeh say that it is "difficult to come to terms with," the bill, sponsored by Knesset Education Committee Chairman Michael Melchior and MK Esterina Tartman, which was approved on its preliminary reading, and which calls for the introduction of a secular-religious educational stream.

The editors contend that the bill is liable to be detrimental to educational basics and that religious education must safeguard its integrity.

The Knesset approved a law yesterday intended to regulate organ donations in compliance with Jewish law.

The bill was passed with the support of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party.

The new law on brain and respiratory death was introduced by MK Otniel Schneller (Kadima), and it was accompanied by an exceptional process of discussion between rabbis and doctors.

The bill enjoyed the support of senior rabbis from the Sephardic ultra-Orthodox community as well as from the National Religious camp, including the Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar. Ashkenazi interpreters of halakah, however, were in disagreement on the bill.

…The Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox publics have almost completely refrained from donating organs until now. In the case of the ultra-Orthodox, their rabbis had not recognized the status of brain death, and therefore viewed the extraction of such organs as equivalent to murder.

Within the national religious community, there was a serious crisis of faith vis-a-vis the medical establishment, which led to a lack of agreement on determining the moment of death.

"It wasn't just for moral reasons, but primarily for reasons of Jewish and halakhic values. I, my wife and other family members have all signed Adi [organ donor] cards, conditioned on rabbinical supervision."

…"One reason for the reluctance to donate organs is linked to religious belief, and there is a halakhic issue that influences some people: Not everyone agrees that brain death can be defined as death [according to religious law]."

"There is also the question of the resurrection of the dead, but I never understood why that should have an influence," he added. "Resurrection of the dead is a miracle in which the body restores itself and does not remain in the grave. One organ more or less will not affect the world to come."

But the question is whether the rabbis will also issue letters calling on people to donate organs, how insistent these letters will be and whether the rabbis themselves will take part in events to increase participation, as described above.

From the point of Jewish law, organ transplant can be either murder, or a lifesaving act. There is no middle ground. If brain death is not death according to halakha, then the organs are harvested while the donor is still alive, and this constitutes murder according to religious law.

The new law provides an opportunity, at least in the area of saving lives, to put the Haredim in their place.

Rabbi Yosef and the national-religious rabbis, as well as the publics they represent, must, and can, be assertive this time and bring pressure to bear on the Haredim.

For if they are allowed to carry on as they have, other sectors will also continue evading organ donation - superstition and primeval fears exist in nearly every sector of the population.

The number of lives saved through transplants depends, to no small degree, on the norms that religious and civil leaders manage to instill. Since this is one of the few norms that enjoys a near-unanimous consensus, instilling it must not be delayed for even an hour.

The Israel Religious Action Center of the [Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism] (IRAC) told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday it intended to complain to the attorney-general over remarks made by Safed Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliahu in the wake of the killing of eight Mercaz Harav yeshiva students three weeks ago.

IRAC has filed similar complaints against Eliahu in the past, for which he was indicted in 2006.

Rabbi Gilad Kariv, legal adviser for the Reform Movement in Israel, said, "Jewish history is full of zealots whose zealotry has brought tragedies upon the nation while bringing about the moral corruption of the Jewish people.

"Unlike deterrence, revenge should be shunned by Israel as a democratic country of law and order and as the state of the Jewish people. It is hoped that the Jewish people, enjoying a renaissance in its land, will have the sense to expel from its midst dangerous extremists like Rabbi Eliahu," he added.

"Rabbi Eliahu's recent comments prove once again that the attorney-general made a big mistake when he decided to rescind an indictment against him for incitement to racism in exchange for a dubious retraction," Kariv said.

These people fail to understand that their violence is a sign of Judaism's weakness, rather than its strength.

In a country where the life of gentiles is much tougher than the life of Jews and where a Jew cannot be forced to convert and cannot be tempted by promise that the gates of society will be opened to him if he does so, the market of ideas should be open to all competitors.

Jews who fear competition and resort to gangster-like tricks in order to deter their competition are apparently unsure of the quality of their merchandise.

We thought that the Jewish State will free us of this fear, yet again it turns out that a prisoner cannot free himself; the prison is within the soul.

The IDF intends to double the number of haredi soldiers among its ranks within a year, from 500 to 1,000, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Sunday.

Traditionally, ultra-Orthodox soldiers are stationed in either the Haredi Nahal or the Air Force. Following consultations by senior IDF officers with various rabbis, the military is now preparing to both increase their numbers there, as well as integrate them into the Logistics Corps.

Compared to the 50,000 exemptions from service given to ultra-Orthodox youngsters every year, these are baby steps…

The self-appointed Supreme Judicial Court of the Jewish People, also known as the Sanhedrin, passed down on Thursday a halachic ruling which calls to exempt women from army service and expel those who have already been [drafted].

MK Pines seeks to annul Tal Law because he wants to maintain seculars' superiority

By Uri Elitzur, Ynetnews.com March 30, 2008

Does Knesset Member Ophir Pines-Paz believe that annulling the law will lead to a mass enlistment of haredim to the IDF? Is the State capable of enforcing the draft on an entire population which is not interested in enlisting? Will the Military Police enter the yeshivot and forcibly drag 30,000 students? Is the army interested in this? Can it absorb them?

The Tal Law is some kind of a way out, a long way which allows us to start by changing the norms and shocking the required foundations inside the haredi population, so that in 20 or 30 years most of its men will be working people, educated people and professionals, who contribute to the economy, and partly, one way or another, also serve in the army, both in compulsory and reserve service.

Attorney General Menachem Mazuz will not represent the Religious Judges Appointment Committee in a Supreme Court petition challenging the committee's decision not to remove Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger from his post as a religious court judge, Mazuz informed Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann.

In so-doing Mazuz is showing his lack of confidence in the decision of the committee, which is chaired by Friedmann.

A police investigation against Metzger for accepting perks was closed two years ago, but Mazuz then said its findings should cause Metzger to stand down.

The petition against the committee's decision not to dismiss him was brought two weeks ago by Ometz, which seeks to promote good governance. It also wants Metzger banned from the committee's deliberations until a ruling on the petition.

In recent months, the Chief Rabbinate has noticed a growing trend among businesses across the country that choose to use the kashrut services of one of the dozens new organizations that provide them.

According to law, the Chief Rabbinate is the only body authorized to issue kashrut certificates in Israel, but sources in the Rabbinate admit that it is almost impossible for them to enforce the regulation.

…Other private kashrut companies also call for an end to the Chief Rabbinate's monopoly on Kashrut supervision, claiming that competition in the field would improve the services rendered and lower the prices.

Strauss will start to clearly dairy products containing milk products made with milk not produced by Jews (halav nokhri). These include Danone yogurts and Ski soft cheeses.

While many consider these products to be kosher, as part of a compromise settlement of a class-action suit, Strauss will pay the plaintiffs and their lawyers NIS 50,000 and clearly identify its use of the milk products that some religious Jews consider as meeting a less than stringent level of kashruth.

The suit claimed that Strauss deceived consumers. The judge accepted the compromise, even though the attorney general wanted the agreement examined.

The judge noted that Strauss agreed to the plaintiffs' demands, and their goal was not monetary reward.

This move for separation between religion and state should never be seen (or fought) as a struggle between the non- or anti-religious and the religious.

It should instead be seen as a struggle between the democratic and secular forces (secular in the sense simply of freedom from religious influence on law) and those seeking to bring on the long, dark night of theocracy in Israel (while plundering the treasury in the meantime).

This is not something I (or any right-thinking person) would want for Israel.

As part of the petition, the petitioners requested that the paragraph of the Budget Law that ensured the minimum income of yeshiva students who study in a kolel (yeshiva for married students) be revoked.

The petitioners claimed it was discriminatory since the law regarding guaranteed income ruled out the possibility of granting such insurance to persons who decided to study at a university.

Almost eight years have elapsed since the petitions were submitted; there were five hearings, the last in March 2007 with an expanded bench of judges headed by the president.

Yekutieli has meanwhile died and as for Beruchi, she is meanwhile working and completing her master's degree - the petition is superfluous now.

An ICAR sponsored Division of Property Bill -- which responds to the issue that most husbands refuse a divorce because they seek to blackmail their wives into relinquishing all economic claims -- has passed its first reading in the Knesset.

The bill will allow property to be divided between spouses without waiting for the husband to grant the official divorce, eliminating the financial issues that often fuel the prolonged battle for a get.

Zahava Fisher, NIF grantee Kolech –Religious Women’s Forum’s representative in ICAR, has formulated another new Knesset bill with Labor MK Orit Noked, which would make a get automatically binding one year after the rabbinical courts order a husband to grant a divorce. Currently, a husband who refuses to sign a get is not compelled to do so by the Rabbinate.

With the pool of potential push immigrants drying up, officials like Oded Salomon, the director-general of aliyah and absorption for the Jewish Agency, are thinking about how to pull Jews to Israel in new and different ways.

As mass immigration to Israel of Jews from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia ends and aliyah from elsewhere in the Diaspora slows, agency officials say the organization must figure out new ways to bolster aliyah of choice.

Thus the agency may shift significantly more money to efforts to encourage Westerners -- immigrants of choice -- to make "flexible aliyah," officials said. In such a scenario, getting Jews from Western countries to split their time between Israel and their countries of origin would be considered a success.

Israel's Ministry of Education announced the recognition Tuesday. The Israel Prize is given each year in the humanities, science, arts and culture, and lifetime achievement on Israel's Independence Day. Founded in 1929 as a prestate, quasi-governmental organization, the agency won the award for its Zionist efforts.

"In granting the Israel Prize, the State of Israel expresses its recognition to the organization which brought to realization the vision of the return to Zion, and established a political sovereignty for the Jewish people in their homeland," the education ministry said in a statement.

"It continues today along with the Jewish people and along with the government of Israel to contribute on a daily basis in shaping the face of Israeli society, in settling the land, in absorbing immigrants, in education, in revitalizing neighborhoods and in creating the groundwork for the state."

While the Israeli government did not limit the new incentive plan to Diaspora Jews and former Israelis of significant wealth, the program is, by all appearances, tailored to the needs of multimillionaires. It offers tax exemption for 10 years on all income derived from sources outside Israel, provides newcomers with a year to choose to which country they want to pay taxes, and will not mandate that firms owned by new immigrants be registered as Israeli firms.

Government officials quoted in the Israeli press said that while they do not expect an influx in Jewish millionaire olim, they do believe that the new plan can prove attractive for former Israelis in the high-tech industry who might be looking for ways to return after establishing their business overseas.

Some participants say the conference is being held in Israel this year because Jewish American philanthropists have long been frustrated that while they channel billions of dollars to various projects in Israel, local people of means - especially those with newfound wealth - are not sharing the burden equally.

"Young Jews from abroad - particularly from the East Coast - are among our primary target audiences," he said. According to Golani, the Technion is working with the United Jewish Communities and the Jewish Agency to draw potential candidates. "Maybe they'll stay here after their studies," Golani said.